THE BENDER FAMILY: BLEEDING KANSAS ONE BODY AT A TIME
Article is from Weird US
By: Chris Gethard

In the early days Kansas was notorious for its violence and bloodshed. The intense rivalry between abolitionists and proslavery forces earned the territory the nickname of Bleeding Kansas. Even after conflicts over slavery were a thing of the past, southeast Kansas in particular was known as a rough area. But one case in Kansas history rises above all others in the gruesome and bloody stakes. It is a tale of deception. It is the tale of the mysterious, murdering Bender family of Cherryvale.

The Bender family- parents, son, and daughter- hailed from Germany and settled just northeast of the miniscule town of Cherryvale, Kansas, in 1870. They built a small inn to provide shelter and food for travelers and their horses. With so many settlers making their way through the relatively young and unsettled state in those days, inn-keeping was a lucrative business. But apparently it was not lucrative enough for the Benders. They decided to supplement their income through incredibly treacherous means.

When a traveler would enter the Benders’ home, they would seat him at a dinner table with his back to a canvas curtain. While engaged in conversations by the young and attractive Kate Bender, the unsuspecting traveler would be attacked with a hammer by one of the Bender men, who rained blows down upon the skull of his victim. Then all four of the Benders would loot any money and possessions on the victim’s person, slit his throat, and dump him through a trapdoor into a well-like enclosure beneath their house. Later, under the cover of darkness, the body would be removed and buried in the Benders’ orchard out back. Soon the Benders began preying upon the townsfolk of Cherryville. Kate Bender hung posters in town proclaiming herself professor Miss Katie Bender, with the capacity to cure blindness, deafness, and other infirmities. She also claimed to posses psychic powers, including the ability to communicate with the dead. The Bender men would set upon her clients in their usual manner.

The sign read:

PROF. MISS KATIE BENDER

Can heal all sorts of disorders: Can cure blindness, fits, deafness and all such diseases, also ‘Deaf and Dumbness.

Residence, 14 miles East of Independence, on the road from Independence to Osage Mission one and one half smiles South East of Nornhead Station.

KATIE BENDER

June 18, 1872

 

In all, the Benders murdered eleven people, including George Lochner and his daughter, who in a disturbing incident became buried alive with the mutilated corpse of her father. The Kansas City Times described the discovery of her body:

“The little girl was probably eight years of age, and had long, sunny hair, and some traces of beauty on a countenance that was not yet entirely disfigured by decay. One arm was broken. The breastbone had been driven in. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket and the leg doubled up under the body. Nothing like this sickening series of crimes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the country.”

Others narrowly escaped being killed by the Benders. When one William Pickering refused to sit with his back to the canvas because of its disgusting stains, Kate Bender threatened him with a knife, at which point he fled the premises. Out of the corner of his eye a Catholic priest stopping at the inn saw one of the Bender men hiding a large hammer, and the priest escaped, using the excuse that he needed to tend to his horse.

After the disappearance of a promising local doctor in 1873, suspicions fell on the Benders, so they disappeared overnight. Soon after, eleven graves were discovered in the orchard and the nature of the murders was uncovered. Here is how the Kansas City Times described the initial investigation of the pit beneath the Benders’ home:

"[The Men] groped about over these splotches and held up a handful to the light. The ooze smeared itself over their psalms and dribbled through their fingers. It was blood-thick, fetid, calmly, sticking blood- that they had found groping there in the void. Blood perhaps, of some poor, belated traveler who had laid himself down to dream of home and kindred, and who had died while dreaming of his loved ones.”

The Bender murders quickly became national news, and rewards totaling in thousands of dollars were offered for their capture. Surprisingly, the fate of the Benders is unknown. Rumors quickly sprang up that a posse captured and hanged all four members of the family, though no such posse ever came forward. Some said that other criminals dispatched the Benders. In the early 1880s two females thought to be the Bender women were brought from Illinois to Kansas but were released after a short period, as it was impossible to prove that they were part of the murderous cadre from years before. In fact, it’s possible that the family was not a family at all, just four criminals working together.

Today little remains to remind us of these macabre incidents of Kansas’s past. The inn was destroyed soon after the discovery of the bodies, as souvenir hunters combed and dismantled the building. A marker describing the incidents stands on US 169, near the former site of the inn; it very accurately proclaims the fate of the Benders as “one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Old West.”

HEINOUS ACTS

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Bloody Benders

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Want to know more about the items discussed in the 'Supernatural' episode 'The Benders?' Then check out part two of this 'Inside the Legend' here!

By Dean5339